Ask any child who has taken a Jackson Recycles course, and he or she can list the benefits of recycling: saving valuable resources, saving energy, saving water, saving landfill space, etc. Recycling also makes financial sense by selling recyclable commodities instead of trashing them. Recycling creates jobs and is already a multi-million dollar industry in the Michigan. Still, Michigan recycles far less than any other Great Lakes state, and our recycling rate is 41st of 48 states.

Why is that? No government leadership, plain and simple. After creating a nation-leading leading bottle deposit bill and adopting the ambitious goal of recycling 50 percent of all our state’s trash by 2015, neither state nor county officials have promoted recycling.

Jackson County is a prime example of recycling potential neglected. Currently, the Resource Recovery Facility (aka the incinerator) plays the major role in the county’s solid waste management plan. Jackson County residents pay the highest trash tipping fees in the state, and among the highest in the U.S., to pay for the incinerator. If the county recycled only 30 percent of its waste stream, the amount of garbage that exceeds the incinerator’s daily capacity, more than $2 million in tipping fees could be avoided annually.

County planners way back in the 1980s set of goal of recycling 30 percent of the municipal waste stream. Today’s recycling rates are probably in the single digits. If government officials had supported recycling for the past 30 years, our community could be richer by $100 million!

It costs more to trash resources than to recycle them, so let’s start today to rebuild Jackson County’s recycling policy. Our township supervisors need to hear how much we value recycling. Shall we call them? We can ask our current trash haulers if they offerfree curbside recycling. Our county commissioners should hear from their constituents who pay the highest garbage fees in the country. Jackson County needs a solid waste recycling policy besides the burn-it, bury-it status quo.

Here are some suggestions for our elected officials:

— Hire a county recycling coordinator to organize a comprehensive countywide recycling effort. The county can pay for this position by charging $1 per ton at the tipping scales. The recycling position could be housed in the Jackson County Conservation District.

— Townships and the city of Jackson should consider bidding out trash collection and mandate curbside recycling service. Single stream co-mingled recyclables seem to be prominent in recycling’s future. Our County and City could coordinate with regional recyclers, such as West Washtenaw Recycling Authority.

— The County should rewrite its outdated Solid Waste Management Plan. Adopt recycling as a “resource management” priority, and then implement it.

People want to recycle. We know it is the right thing to do for our economy and for the environment. State recycling leaders say there are shocked that Jackson citizens are not outraged with our exorbitant garbage fees and low recycling rates. Maybe we are. We just need to let our township and county officials hear it.

— Mark Muhich, a Jackson County resident, is chairman of the Central Michigan Group of the Sierra Club.